Oceangate Titan Disaster: A Billionaire’s Dive into Hubris, History, and Horror

[00:00:01] - [Speaker 0]
Apparently, a Boeing's material engineer flat out warned stocks not to proceed with carbon fiber. In his report, he included a graph showing kind of the structural failure risks to drum the message home, included a little skull and crossbones drawn below the 4,000 meter mark. So you've got people literally drawing death symbols, and Stockton's like, stop suppressing my innovation, guys. Yeah. You're what?

[00:00:25] - [Speaker 0]
You're ruining my creativity. Yeah. He never support me in any of my endeavors. What a fool. Welcome to the Compendium, an assembly of fascinating things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

[00:01:05] - [Speaker 0]
We explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, and the jaw dropping deeds of extraordinary people. I'm Kyle Reese, your ringmaster for this week's episode. And I'm Adam Cox, your German wheel specialist. German wheel specialist? What is this?

[00:01:22] - [Speaker 0]
Audi? No. No. No. You know, in the circus, you've got those giant rings that people, like they they're in the middle of them, and they roll around.

[00:01:29] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, okay. And then they kinda look like a coin as this kind of coming to a stop. Yeah. Exactly. That's Why do you need a specialist for that?

[00:01:36] - [Speaker 0]
Well, I'm it. I'm the one that's in the wheel. I'm the German wheel acrobat. Why does it need to be Because I don't know. That's what it's called.

[00:01:44] - [Speaker 0]
I'm not gonna argue with you. In fact, I've learned better. Alright. Before we get stuck in today's episode, let's take a minute for a bit of housekeeping. If you haven't already, jump on our Patreon.

[00:01:54] - [Speaker 0]
Even if you just sign up for free, you'll get next week's episode a whole week early. No strings, no sneaky charges. It's just early access for being awesome. And if you fancy even going a bit further, we've got the certified freaks tier. That gets you access to loads of episodes we haven't released publicly yet, like stuff that is still weeks and weeks away from dropping on the main feed.

[00:02:15] - [Speaker 0]
Plus, we've opened up our season one vault. That means you can now binge through some of our favorite earlier episodes, including that absolutely bonkers one about Jennifer Pan. She staged a fake home invasion and hired a hitman to kill her parents. That is one of my favorite episodes, actually. I couldn't believe how brazen she was, all because she didn't wanna tell her parents that she wasn't good at math.

[00:02:38] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. It's wild. Also, there's the Marie Antoinette episode. If you think you know her, you know all that let them eat cake and all that. Turns out most of what we think we know about her is completely wrong.

[00:02:50] - [Speaker 0]
That one was a real eye opener. So if you can check that one out. And if you're a certified freak, we'll also send you one of our exclusive compendium keychains Oh, yeah. So we can always be near your crotch. Always near your crotch, man.

[00:03:04] - [Speaker 0]
Dangling there like a fresh set of balls. If you're already on the certified freaks tier, just drop us a DM with your address, and we'll sort out the rest. Doesn't matter where you are in the world, we'll ship one out to you free of charge. Basically, if you love the show and want to help us keep making it, then Patreon's the best way to do that. And we'll keep throwing in some cool extras along the way to say thanks.

[00:03:23] - [Speaker 0]
And while you're at it, go ahead and hit that follow button on your podcasting app and leave us a quick review too. It takes just a couple seconds, and it really does help so much to help other people find the show. Alright. That's all the admin out of the way. Let's dive in today's story.

[00:03:38] - [Speaker 0]
Because, Adam, today on the compendium, we are diving into an assembly of billionaire hubris and the ocean's unforgiving fury. Interesting. Unforgiving fury of the ocean. Mhmm. You'll definitely know today's story, actually.

[00:03:54] - [Speaker 0]
Well, it's gotta be, like, some kind of disaster that's happened out at sea. Right? We've already done the Titanic. Today's episode is actually really closely linked to the Titanic. Oh, okay.

[00:04:03] - [Speaker 0]
There's something really alluring about the ocean, something that really calls to us. Maybe it's the mystery. Maybe it's the danger. Maybe it's the promise of something just beyond reach. This is exactly how one man felt about the ocean, a man that many called a visionary, a pioneer even, determined to explore the extreme edges of the planet that we call home and to push the boundaries of human ingenuity while doing it.

[00:04:29] - [Speaker 0]
His name is Richard Stockton Rush Junior. And on the 06/18/2023, Stockton set off aboard his state of the art submersible, the Titan, along with four other crew members on a mission to explore the century old wreck of the Titanic. But just one hour and forty five minutes later, the Titan vanished. No communication, no automated pings, no sign of the vessel, just silence. Adam, today in the compendium, I'm gonna be telling you the full story of the twenty twenty three Ocean Gate Titan disaster.

[00:05:06] - [Speaker 0]
Wow. Yeah. This was a disaster, wasn't it? What do you remember of the story? From what I remember, they were, like, missing for, like, several days, and it was all over the news in terms of have they survived?

[00:05:16] - [Speaker 0]
Have they run out of oxygen? Mhmm. Yep. And then you find out the whole thing imploded Yeah. All things.

[00:05:22] - [Speaker 0]
You just yeah. I don't think it was ever on anyone's mind initially when it was first reported. What that it imploded? Well, let me tell you. Because today we're gonna bust some myths.

[00:05:32] - [Speaker 0]
Because soon after the Titan disappeared, a desperate search began and the whole world watched as rescue teams raced against the clock. News channels, in a grim bid for ratings, ran twenty four hour countdowns tracking how many hours of oxygen were left on board, keeping people glued to their phones and, of course, their televisions. Meanwhile, social media exploded with memes and speculation and loads of misinformation. But behind the headlines, the truth was far darker, Adam. Four years before the Titan was even built, engineers and safety experts had been warning about its design.

[00:06:05] - [Speaker 0]
They'd raised serious concerns, and Stockton Rush ignored every single one of them defiantly. Eventually, the Titan was found, but it wasn't floating on the surface waiting to be rescued like the media deliberately led us to believe. Instead, it had imploded instantaneously less than six seconds after its last communication. Everyone on board was killed instantly. And now the Titan's wreckage was resting beside the very ship that it was trying to reach.

[00:06:34] - [Speaker 0]
So you can appreciate the irony there. And that's where the story becomes really haunting because it's eerily similar to the tragedy that befell the Titanic itself. In both cases, warnings were given. In both cases, they were ignored. Two vessels, two captains, and now two wrecks lie side by side at the bottom of the North Atlantic.

[00:06:53] - [Speaker 0]
So the media deliberately led us to believe that they were waiting to be rescued. The sombering truth is that the media actually knew that the most likely outcome was that they had imploded and that they were dead, and the chance of actually finding them floating up on the ocean was very, very slim. Yet that's the narrative that they pushed. Wow. So we're gonna get into all of that today because today's story actually eerily rhymes with the baby Jessica rescue and also the Challenger disaster when twenty four hour news was still trying to find its feet and understand how they can really push that twenty four hour news cycle and the things that they needed to do to make people glued to their screens.

[00:07:30] - [Speaker 0]
And this was just another iteration of that cycle, which is really sombering and really disappointing. Because as we always come to find, the media will always put profits and ratings ahead of sometimes even the truth. Yeah. Absolutely. To be honest, I'm not really sure what imploding means.

[00:07:46] - [Speaker 0]
Like exploding, everyone knows. It's a big explosion. It's like a fireball or whatever it is, and all the carnage is, like, thrown outwards. An implosion, is that just everything being sucked inwards? Pretty much.

[00:07:57] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Because you're at the bottom of the ocean, you're under all this amount of pressure. Just imagine all of a sudden all the air gets sucked out of, like, a can, and the whole thing just crumbles together. That's exactly what implosion means. Right.

[00:08:09] - [Speaker 0]
So they would have been crushed, I guess. Mhmm. Yeah. Right. So, Adam, today, we're gonna fill in all the gaps.

[00:08:14] - [Speaker 0]
We're gonna look at the man behind the Titan, Stockton Rush, the engineering risks that he took, the red flags he dismissed, the media frenzy that exploded as the world watched this tragedy unfold in real time. Today's story is about innovation, it's about hubris, and it's about accountability or a lack thereof. I'm really excited about today's episode. So you ready to dive in? Let's do it.

[00:08:38] - [Speaker 0]
So, Adam, the guy behind Ocean Gate and the Titan is Richard Stockton Rush junior. If you were keeping up with the story as it was unfolding back in June 2023, then you'll probably recognize him as that kind of gray haired CEO of Ocean Gate. He's kind of plastered all over the news. Like, every time they were reporting on it, it's him standing in front of kind of the Titan. Okay.

[00:08:57] - [Speaker 0]
That's pretty much him. And his backstory is really fascinating. He says that ever since he could remember, he'd always wanted to be an astronaut. Specifically, he wanted to be the first person to walk on Mars. So the complete opposite of what he was doing in 2023.

[00:09:12] - [Speaker 0]
He says he always envisioned himself being Captain Kirk from Star Trek, you know, exploring new frontiers, boldly going where no man has ever gone before. Yeah. Captain's log. Exactly. So while it's the opposite of deep sea exploration, they're both kinda at the frontier of different things.

[00:09:28] - [Speaker 0]
And this might sound like the fantasies of a kid scribbling in his notebook, but shocked and rushed. He believed that exploring space was something well within his reach because he had both the means and the mindset, but most importantly, he had the lineage. He unashamedly says that he earns his wealth the old fashioned way, basically saying the Bank of Mom and Dad was at his disposal. He doesn't say when you inherit a load of money Mhmm. You could pretty much anything you like, I Everything is easy.

[00:09:55] - [Speaker 0]
Right? And, basically, he's saying that he grew his wealth from there, but he had a pretty good head start. Mhmm. His father was this guy called Richard Stockton Rush senior, the president-elect of the Bohemian Club, which is known for its secretive gatherings of powerful men that basically gave him access to all sorts of elite connections and influence. His grandfather was Ralph K.

[00:10:14] - [Speaker 0]
Davies, who is the youngest vice president in Standard Oil's history. But if you go further back than that, Stockton Rush was also related to both doctor Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton, whose signatures both appear on The United States declaration of independence. So it's fair to say he comes from a very, very long line of very, very impressive influential men. As I say, he's got money, and then he's got these great, great, great, whatever. Ancestors.

[00:10:42] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. And so is that where the money's come from because of those people that signed the independence? Not necessarily. I think his family were quite big in business anyway. Mhmm.

[00:10:50] - [Speaker 0]
Philanthropists and kind of business people, etcetera. So the idea that something was just impossible, especially in the shadow of these ancestors, just wasn't something that was part of his vocabulary. He couldn't be a flop. He absolutely was not even an option. Yeah.

[00:11:04] - [Speaker 0]
Before he even gets started at university, Stockton Rush had become the youngest jet transport rated pilot in the world. And from there, during his summer breaks from university, he would spend a couple of years flying charter planes in and out of The Middle East. That's how you know you are you are rich. Right? Like, hey, Stockton.

[00:11:21] - [Speaker 0]
What did you do over summer break? Oh, you know, I just flew my plane out of Iraq, you know, for a bit, like, just casually. And I'm like, oh, yeah. Cool. Yeah.

[00:11:28] - [Speaker 0]
I got hepatitis from drinking, drinks of beer from people's drinks in the bar. That's something I don't feel like we've talked about that. We need to have a conversation. So, basically, he eventually graduates from Princeton with a degree in aerospace engineering. And so for him, the next logical step was the US Air Force.

[00:11:46] - [Speaker 0]
But as he's going through the application process, he is dealt a massive blow when they tell him that he's actually failed the standard eye test and that he's actually never going to get a chance to be a pilot of a military aircraft. So he's absolutely gutted. Is there nothing he can do, like wear some glasses, or or is that no enough? Well, it's interesting because I knew a guy who was also really eager to be a pilot. When he went to go apply to be a commercial pilot, he failed his eye test.

[00:12:09] - [Speaker 0]
He didn't have twenty twenty vision, but he went for an operation to get it fixed. So I'm wondering, like, is that an option? Maybe that wasn't a thing at the time, laser eye surgery? Yeah. I don't know what the operation was.

[00:12:20] - [Speaker 0]
So for him, clearly, this wasn't an option. At first, it's really hard for him to take. So he spends some time sulking. He's coming to terms with the idea that he was never going to be a pilot. But this didn't stop him from still pursuing his dream of being the next Captain Kirk, basically.

[00:12:35] - [Speaker 0]
He also didn't want to do this under the US military anyway because, of course, it was just potentially too limiting. He wanted to kinda do it on his own terms, a bit like Elon Musk. Right? He's not monitoring to anyone. So he lands a job as a test flight engineer within the aerospace industry working for McDonnell Douglas, which is a huge, huge organization in the industry.

[00:12:54] - [Speaker 0]
While there, he joins the board of trustees at the Seattle Museum of Light, which is where he meets his wife and fellow pilot, Wendy Weil. And Wendy's lineage is just as impressive as Stockton's, in my opinion even more so, because she's actually the great great granddaughter of Isidore Strauss, who, if you remember from our Titanic episode, he was the co owner of Macy's whose story is immortalized in James Cameron's 1997 film, the Titanic movie. If you remember, Isidore and his wife, Ida, they were the elderly couple who gave up their spots in their lifeboat to their maid. And in the movie, while everyone is, like, just freaking out, you just see them both sitting on deck chairs holding hands coming to peace with the idea that they were gonna die before, like, a wave just comes and sweeps them off. Yeah.

[00:13:39] - [Speaker 0]
Them and the elderly couple in the bed. Yeah. When they go, that always make me feel really sad. Actually, yeah. I might miss remembering this.

[00:13:46] - [Speaker 0]
Maybe that's them. I think in real life, were sitting on the deck, but in the movie, they were in their beds. I can't remember. Or maybe they were two separate couples. I don't know.

[00:13:53] - [Speaker 0]
I can't remember now. But, I always remember the couple in the bed because just they're like spooning each other as they're waiting. Have one more spoon, babe. One more spoon for good old times. And then the guy's, can I be little spoon tonight?

[00:14:03] - [Speaker 0]
And she's, yes, dear. No. Is this the last time? So basically, it's fair to say that both Stockton and Wendy have both very incredible lineages. So Stockton is working as a Tesla engineer, and on the side, he continues flying as a hobby.

[00:14:16] - [Speaker 0]
He builds himself a small aircraft made of fiberglass, which at the time was highly questionable in terms of durability. It's considered a bit of a radical kind of move to try and build an aircraft using these types of materials. But here lies his hubris because he seems to consistently get wound up by people telling him that he's doing something wrong, which rather than stepping back and evaluating and going, okay. Yeah. Maybe fiberglass isn't the best thing for what I'm trying to do.

[00:14:41] - [Speaker 0]
It just spurs him on even more to try and prove them wrong. Like, he doesn't come from a family who've made their mark by saying something was not possible. Do you know what I mean? So to him, it's like, well, I know better. I know what I'm doing.

[00:14:53] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. You can't tell me what to do. Break my mother. All that sort of stuff. Exactly.

[00:14:58] - [Speaker 0]
And so if you haven't already picked up on it, this is the first bit of foreshadowing in the story. That he won't listen to other people and does what he wants to do. Mhmm. Okay. I'm sure that doesn't work out well when it comes to health and safety.

[00:15:10] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. OSHA's gonna come knocking. Mhmm. Eventually, Stockton Rush realizes that the aerospace industry just isn't moving fast enough for him. He's getting older, and he's kinda built his entire career on this notion that he was going to live through the commercialization of spaceflight.

[00:15:24] - [Speaker 0]
But with every passing year, that dream just seems to inch further and further away. This is when it hits him that even if commercial spaceflight became a reality today, there was nothing really up there in space anyway. It was mostly just a bunch of distant stars and the same old views of Earth that he's seen, like, a million times before in photographs. The odds of him ever seeing Mars, let alone Jupiter, were just vanishingly small. So he didn't see any point in chasing a dream that was just light years away.

[00:15:49] - [Speaker 0]
Mhmm. But then he thinks to himself, there was one frontier that he could explore. A world just as vast, just as alien, but something that was completely within his reach. Under the sea. Exactly.

[00:16:00] - [Speaker 0]
It wasn't above. It wasn't below. It was deep in the ocean. And this made perfect sense to him because he was already a seasoned diver. In fact, by the age of 14, he'd already been certified as a scuba diver.

[00:16:10] - [Speaker 0]
As an adult, every time he went diving, he was always really put off by how limiting all the gear was, like the masks and the tank kinda really restricted your field of view and where you're able to go and the depths that you're able to go. So he starts to wonder if perhaps there was a better way that he could innovate in this area. And then it hits him, the answer was sitting right in front of him, submersibles. To create his own little, submarine, I guess. But at this point, he is not able to physically create one.

[00:16:37] - [Speaker 0]
So he's actually gonna go just buy one. I was gonna say there's probably a lot out there. Right? In submersibles? Yeah.

[00:16:43] - [Speaker 0]
In terms of privately owned submersibles, there's fewer than a 100 in the world that he has access to. So it's not easy. Basically, the submersibles, they would allow people to go far deeper than traditional scuba gear, meaning that he could explore things further afield, like shipwrecks and kinda trenches and things like that. But accessibility on a commercial scale just was just nonexistent unless you were, of course, a researcher or a rich billionaire. And even then, expeditions took months, sometimes even years just to set up an arrange.

[00:17:10] - [Speaker 0]
So Stockton goes looking for a submersible to buy. Eventually, he stumbles upon a bright yellow Kittredge three fifty rated for depths of a 100 meters. It wasn't perfect for what he needed, but it was his starting point. So he sets about updating all the electronics. He customizes the controls, and, of course, he gives it a brand new sexy name, suds.

[00:17:33] - [Speaker 0]
Suds? As in like soap suds? Yeah. Why did he land on that? I think it's brilliant.

[00:17:39] - [Speaker 0]
Why not? I don't know. Feel like it should be like the majestic. Or the pan. The pan.

[00:17:44] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Exactly. So eventually, 02/2006, just off the coast of British Columbia, Stockton Rush takes Sudds out on his first dive, and he's just blown away just by how alien and interesting the seafloor is. He's seeing all these things that he's never seen before, which was just far cooler than anything he imagined that he could see from Earth's orbit. And he's piloting this himself?

[00:18:05] - [Speaker 0]
He hasn't got, like, a specialist? Nope. Just doing it all his own. I don't know. I feel like you need to have some kind of skills or knowledge of the water to be able to do I think if you are someone who's really ambitious and really driven, you'll just pick things up on your own.

[00:18:18] - [Speaker 0]
Right? And rich. And he's rich. Don't forget that. Yeah.

[00:18:20] - [Speaker 0]
I'm sure he's had help. Obviously, he's had help. I feel like the first time you should at least go with it's like learning to drive a car. You need someone else there. Yeah.

[00:18:28] - [Speaker 0]
But remember, he has bought this. Right? It's not like he's built it. It's certified to go under the water. It's safe.

[00:18:33] - [Speaker 0]
He's checked it out. He's kicked it a couple times. He's walked around. He's, oh, can this scratch be buffed out, etcetera. So he knows it can physically go under the water.

[00:18:40] - [Speaker 0]
Sure. But even still, fair enough. And the thing is though, like, he's seeing all these cool things. And what really blows my mind is that approximately 91% of all marine species are still waiting to be discovered. Did you know that?

[00:18:51] - [Speaker 0]
How do we know it's 91%? We found at least 9%. I'm sure there's 91% more. Yeah. How do they know?

[00:18:57] - [Speaker 0]
They can't do the maths on that unless they know what the missing bit is. I get they haven't explored, like, the depths of some of the ocean floor. And so, yes, maybe you can estimate you've only seen this part of the ocean. Mhmm. But to know that it's 91%, call up David.

[00:19:10] - [Speaker 0]
David who? David Attleborough. Oh, is he alive? There's a subreddit called, is David Attleborough alive? So you could just go on there every day, and someone will just give you an update on whether or not he's alive, and there's just a picture of David Attleborough, and we'll be like, yes.

[00:19:25] - [Speaker 0]
He is still alive. He's still alive. That's it. Sometimes they'll post, an image of David Attleborough that looks like in memoriam. Mhmm.

[00:19:31] - [Speaker 0]
Like a like his best photograph. And the caption will say, sir David Attleborough's family have confirmed that he has peacefully passed a prostate exam at the age of 99. I can't see this subreddit aging very well when that actually happens. Oh, god. Someone will finally post no.

[00:19:47] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Yeah. He's died. That'll be such a sad day. He's such Yeah.

[00:19:50] - [Speaker 0]
A national icon and No. You it will be a sad day. But, yeah, apparently, like, 91% of marine species are still waiting to be discovered. And basically, what this means is that we know more about what's on land and in space than we do about what's in the middle of the ocean. Mhmm.

[00:20:06] - [Speaker 0]
And with a submersible, Stockton could explore all of it, ancient shipwrecks, lost planes, bubbling, hydrothermal vents, all just waiting to be found. But remember, Suds could only still go a 100 meters deep. Most of the ocean was far deeper than that. So if he was gonna make this work, Sudds was going to need a major upgrade. So he starts shopping for a better submersible thinking like this was gonna be a breeze.

[00:20:28] - [Speaker 0]
But this is when he begins to realize, like, throughout the entire planet, there are fewer than a 100 privately owned submersibles available for Inspire. And most of them are just museum pieces, which obviously can no longer go under the water anyway, or they were just far too old or far too outdated. So he's like, what the hell am I gonna do? And to him, the irony was that he had made this huge career change only to realize that for the modern millionaire getting to space was beginning to seem far easier than getting to the bottom of the ocean. Alright.

[00:20:57] - [Speaker 0]
That's weird, isn't it? Yeah. It's so weird, isn't it? So he realizes that if he's going to make this work, he's going to have to build the sub himself. But Stockton is rich, but he's not richie rich rich.

[00:21:09] - [Speaker 0]
So if he was gonna make this happen, he was going to have to get someone else to pay for it. He does a bunch of research. He calculates that the appetite for the adventure tourism market, especially amongst millionaires and billionaires, is valued at around $275,000,000,000 a year. So he's identified an opportunity that there is a load of rich people out there willing to spend a lot of money on these big adventure things that no one else can do. But this also includes commercial opportunities too.

[00:21:33] - [Speaker 0]
So where industries like oil, mining, and pharmaceuticals might be interested in exploring the seafloor. Why would pharmaceuticals be interested? What? To find, like, new, like- chemical compounds and whatnot. They just wanna see what's under there, see if they can maybe use it in the pharmaceutical industry.

[00:21:47] - [Speaker 0]
And probably, like, once all the drugs are, like, flushed out in your toilet into the sea, probably just go collect all them up. And just repackage them up. Repackage them up. Yeah. That's gross.

[00:21:56] - [Speaker 0]
That's nasty. He takes all this market research. He pulls together a pitch, and he goes off to visit aerospace entrepreneur, GMO Zerlein. And he proposes basically that GMO buys old Suds from him, and together, they'll set about modernizing it with all new tech and reinforcements. And, basically, they will sell expeditions to tourists and various industries.

[00:22:17] - [Speaker 0]
At first, GMO is not sure. Like, helping oil companies drill the ocean while promoting this idea of ocean sustainability, conservation, and research just all sounded too contradictory to him. But in the end, Stockton wins him over by convincing him that he saw it like a needle exchange. Do you know you know what a needle exchange is? Right?

[00:22:35] - [Speaker 0]
No. Basically, different cities around the world will be like, okay. Drugs are illegal, but if you're gonna take the drugs, come to us and we'll give you fresh clean needles. Basically, the drug taking is gonna happen regardless, but you can still intervene to make sure it's done safely. Right.

[00:22:50] - [Speaker 0]
So in this scenario, they're saying, like, you're still gonna go do this expedition, but I'm gonna provide what? That's clean? Even if these oil companies were looking to go drill for oil, at least they could be at the forefront making sure it's done properly. Okay. So with GMO now convinced, in 02/2009, the two of them cofound Ocean Gate, and this is the birth of our company.

[00:23:11] - [Speaker 0]
So it around quite a while then. Yeah. 02/2009. So GMO's role was to basically help launch a company and then eventually step back into a passive investor role. They set up headquarters in Washington, and the expedition arm of the company was going to operate out of The Bahamas.

[00:23:29] - [Speaker 0]
From the very start of their mission, it was clear that they were setting out to disrupt the submersible industry in a way that SpaceX had disrupted kinda space travel. And Stockton was basically the perfect CEO because he doesn't like being told something is impossible, which is the perfect thing that you need when you are the CEO of such a pioneering initiative company. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. He's gotta be a visionary.

[00:23:51] - [Speaker 0]
He can't be told something like, no. And he goes, okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

[00:23:55] - [Speaker 0]
So to him, 99% of the barriers were all just engineering challenges. Right? And if they could overcome all of those, then literally anything is possible. So now SUDS is out. They find a new submersible called the Antipodes, and it was originally built in the nineteen seventies and was used in the oil and gas industry.

[00:24:12] - [Speaker 0]
It was fairly small. It had room for, like, five people, but it could dive down to 300 meters. They make a bunch of minor modifications to it, and once that was done, they set out on their first expedition to the SS Governor shipwreck just off Victoria Island in Canada. The wreck itself was rumored to contain treasure hidden away kind of in a vault somewhere, a bit like the plot of the Titanic movie, basically. They're there to try and find the heart of the ocean.

[00:24:35] - [Speaker 0]
The treasure was estimated to be worth 1,500,000.0 to $4,000,000, but strong currents meant that it was really unsafe to kind of go down there in regular standard scuba diving equipment. But even with that said, they're not actually interested in the actual treasure itself. It's more of the allure of the wreck itself. And, also, it's very close to Washington where their headquarters are, so it's the perfect spot. And like I said, they were there to test Antipodes mapping and surveying capabilities.

[00:25:02] - [Speaker 0]
By 02/2012, Ocean Gates had been going for three years. They'd learned a ton about the industry. They were doing a ton of research, and so they were now ready to take the next step. They wanted to go deeper. They announced their next project with the launch of their newest sub called Cyclops one.

[00:25:19] - [Speaker 0]
So they've gone from Suds, the Antipodes? Antipodes. Yeah. Antipodes and Cyclops. Where are they getting these names from?

[00:25:26] - [Speaker 0]
I think with the Cyclops, it's more a case of it's got this big old single viewport that looks like a giant eye, one eye in the center. Yeah. Cyclops there. And, basically, Cyclops one was this steel hole. It could hold five people, but this time, it was capable of entering down to 500 meters.

[00:25:41] - [Speaker 0]
So they retrofitted with a ton of new gadgets, including a new sonar technology kit. It's completely state of the art, and navigating the sub is done with a PlayStation three controller. Wow. This is like pimp my sub kinda thing. I meant did they have any, like, lights or some kind of boombox and, I don't know, like, new wheels?

[00:25:59] - [Speaker 0]
It's fair to say that they had a lot of pioneering tech on there. So a lot of touch screens, single buttons. Like, when you get into your car, right, there's one button to start the engine. Same with this thing. Fluffy dice?

[00:26:08] - [Speaker 0]
Possibly. Who knows? Fluffy they're fluffy orcas Yeah. Hanging over the viewport. But also, if you remember back from when the media were reporting the story, the game controller was the one thing that they really latched onto.

[00:26:19] - [Speaker 0]
Do you remember that? Yeah. So they used the game controller to steer the ship. Why that and not just a regular control? Well, that's the question that a lot of people were asking.

[00:26:27] - [Speaker 0]
Right? People start mocking them for it, implying that if this is how the Titan navigates itself, then what other corners did they cut? Like, who navigates a bloody submarine with a PlayStation three controller? Yeah. Because I would have thought when they bought this submarine, it would have had a controller to move it around.

[00:26:42] - [Speaker 0]
Why have they replaced it with a PlayStation? Using a GamePad controller in this way is actually fairly standard. Is it? Yeah. The military had been using game controllers for this purpose for years when using it to navigate drones and ROVs and things like that.

[00:26:56] - [Speaker 0]
So it wasn't like this thing. The key difference though is that the Titan's controllers were wireless, which means that if the signal dropped for any reason, then you were screwed. And I imagine, like, only recently have wireless controllers become good. Remember, like, the Wii? That would always, like, mess up.

[00:27:12] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. But even still, the military do not trust wireless. So I was looking at Reddit the other day with the Ukraine war at the moment, and they obviously have a huge artillery of these different drones that fly around. And they're not wireless. They're connected with a single strand of fiber optic cable up to 10 kilometers long.

[00:27:31] - [Speaker 0]
So this drone is attached to that, and that's how they fly because Really? The signal can't be jammed. And also it gives a zero latency feedback to the actual controller who's controlling these drones. So the thing that's really interesting is you see these kind of military fields, and they're just laced and littered with just lines and lines of these fiber optic cables all over the place. It looks like one big giant spider web.

[00:27:54] - [Speaker 0]
I had no idea when they talk about these drones. They are connected to a to cable. Connected to a cable. Literally a cable. It's only like a couple millimeters thick, but they're attached to it.

[00:28:03] - [Speaker 0]
That is wild. But it's also like a major pollution problem because once the war is over, hopefully, it would be over soon, these things are just gonna be all over the countryside. Just these I mean, I guess you could recycle them, maybe. I guess so. It's glass, I think, isn't it?

[00:28:17] - [Speaker 0]
And so these controllers is weird because I might think they're exactly ones with the square and the circle buttons. Yeah. It depends. You can use different types of controllers, but this one specifically was a PlayStation three controller at the time. I just imagine you know, like in Street Fighter, you have to do, like, a special move.

[00:28:31] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. You're like like, circle circle, triangle. Forward back. Yes. Good.

[00:28:35] - [Speaker 0]
They they program it with special moves like a flip. Finish. There's an Orca. Finishing. Cyclops one debuts its first of 17 missions in 02/2015.

[00:28:48] - [Speaker 0]
But around this time, something major happens that kinda sorta changes the market and with it the entire direction of Ocean Gate. They start getting inundated with people inquiring whether or not they offered commercial trips down to the Titanic. In the early two thousands, an Australian based company called Deep Ocean Expeditions was routinely running these charter trips to the Titanic site. But in 02/2012, the Russian company that was leasing them these submarines suddenly just ended their agreement. So a bunch of these rich millionaire adventure tourists had, like, their book is just canceled out of the blue.

[00:29:21] - [Speaker 0]
Some of them had been waiting, like, five years to visit the Titanic. And so Ocean Gate realizes that there was a ton of rich millionaires and billionaires begging to give them money to take them down to the Titanic. And I get the allure. Right? Wendy has a Titanic connection, but also the story of the Titanic is so captivating to so many people.

[00:29:40] - [Speaker 0]
Right? From its legacy to the juxtaposition between the rich and the poor, the hubris, and, of course, the tragedy and the death. So it's kinda like the perfect story. Yeah. I think there's still a lot of interest.

[00:29:50] - [Speaker 0]
And I think because the ship is relatively well preserved or had been up until this point, the fact that you could go see a lot of the world's biggest sort of ship at the time. Mhmm. I always find it so fascinating when they manage to salvage some things from the Titanic, like dinner plates and combs and just the personal effects that I find the most fascinating, like hairbrushes and mirrors and things like that. People physically used while they're on the Titanic. It's captivating.

[00:30:14] - [Speaker 0]
So just as Cyclops one is getting started, Ocean Gate pivots, they decide that they were gonna cash in on this opportunity and start taking tourists to see the Titanic. But, of course, Cyclops one is only capable of depths of 500 meters. The Titanic is 4,000 meters down. Oh, damn. That's quite a difference.

[00:30:32] - [Speaker 0]
So Stockton approaches a bunch of different private investors to see if they can secure some funding to create a better submersible. He ends up partnering with this company called Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington, and they basically unlock $5,000,000 worth of grant money, and they start working on a prototype. This is the titan. So they're gonna build it themselves, but there has been other submarines or subaquatics, whatever, that have gone to these depths before Yeah. From the Russian company who've taken it back.

[00:31:04] - [Speaker 0]
Could they have not just gone to them and leased or done something like that? I think he wants to build his own company. Right? He wants to commercialize it. He wants to make something that is just really easy to produce and replicate.

[00:31:14] - [Speaker 0]
He can make a ton of them, and he can really capitalize on it. Right? Maximize his profits. A bit like what SpaceX is doing with their reusable rocket engines. Right?

[00:31:23] - [Speaker 0]
Right. With NASA, rockets can only be used once. Right? And then they gotta get them rebuilt. He wants to create something that can just be reused over and over and over and really maximize on those profits.

[00:31:32] - [Speaker 0]
Sure. So initially, the Titan was called Cyclops two. But in the moment of realization, they changed his name to the Titan to reflect the fact that they were gonna be taking people to visit the Titanic wreck. Once the Titan was built, it was 9,525 kilograms in weight, probably like the size of a really large car. It's nine foot tall.

[00:31:52] - [Speaker 0]
It's 22 foot long. And unlike the other submersibles that they had before, Titan was brand new. It was literally built from scratch. Instead of a steel or titanium hole, the entire thing was gonna be made of carbon fiber, which is lighter, cheaper, and allow them to make this up far, far bigger than these other kind of rival kind of submersibles that were available for their purpose. Designing the sub from scratch also meant they could design it to be more mobile and at less cost.

[00:32:17] - [Speaker 0]
Ordinarily, when you were deploying these other types of subs, like, that are owned by these research companies, you need really specialized equipment and a research vessel to transport the sub out to kind of your location and then to deploy it into kind of the ocean. And they cost a $100,000 a day. So they figured that we could develop that deployment kit so we didn't have to rely on these huge ships that we have to rent out at such a huge cost. So they would go from, like, the land straight into the water then? They wouldn't be deployed from a ship?

[00:32:46] - [Speaker 0]
No. So these launch vehicles would be put onto these huge ships, and then they would be taken out to the site and then deployed into the ocean from there. But it's just too much money. A $100,000 is a lot for every time that they wanted to deploy it. So if you're out on an eight day trip, you've been charged per day just to rent out that that that ship.

[00:33:05] - [Speaker 0]
But the biggest factor of the Titan was that it needed to be capable of reaching 4,000 meters, so they had to do a ton of tests. In 02/2016, they start testing. They carry out 50 tests in total, And every single time, it implodes before it comes anywhere near 3,000 meters worth of pressure. Okay. 50 tests have gone wrong.

[00:33:26] - [Speaker 0]
I mean, don't know how many tests these kind of things have to go through. I imagine probably a lot more, but the fact is 50 times. Mhmm. And they haven't learned from that. What what's going wrong here then?

[00:33:35] - [Speaker 0]
Basically, it's the materials that they're using. They're building it out of carbon fiber. Right? And everyone's telling them carbon fiber is not suitable for these depths. What's worrying here is that while they're scrambling to get some successful tests out of this, they have already started announcing that they are going to be offering their first expeditions to the Titanic rec site.

[00:33:54] - [Speaker 0]
Remember, they don't even have one that works yet, and they're now announcing it. And are they doing that to get deposits essentially to help fund their project? Oh, it could be. Yeah. And to drum up interest and things like that.

[00:34:05] - [Speaker 0]
So they're jumping ahead of the gun a little bit here, but there's clearly a purpose as to why. On the website, they market these as a luxury sightseeing tour, but it wasn't gonna be a jolly cruise because tourists were gonna be dubbed as mission specialists rather than passengers. And Ocean Gate says that this way, you would be actively participating in the research portion of the expedition. So, basically, you'll be helping taking readings and samples, working alongside kind of Ocean Gate's crew to just get the thing into the ocean. And you gotta pay for this?

[00:34:36] - [Speaker 0]
Hang on. You've given away, like, a $100,000, I imagine this is gonna cost you at least. And you're like, yeah. You need to be checking the readings, and you're also gonna be steering it. I'd be like, hang on a minute.

[00:34:45] - [Speaker 0]
But listen. The logic there is that they say that this way the experience would mean more than just a regular trip because you're actually involved in it. Yeah. That's just some marketing ploy. Remember this anyway because it's gonna be very important later.

[00:34:59] - [Speaker 0]
In the announcement, they say that you'll be sailed 300 nautical miles out to the middle of the North Atlantic where you'll spend a couple days in training and orientation. And if the weather permits, you'll have a three day window where you'll get the opportunity to dive down to the Titanic. So it's not even a guarantee. Well, I understand that. They yeah.

[00:35:18] - [Speaker 0]
They are thinking about that. But, yeah, to spend that much and not actually go down to the water. It's crazy. And the promise was that this would be a once in a lifetime experience. But more importantly, the experience was open to everyone with a caveat, as long as you had 105,129 for the tickets.

[00:35:39] - [Speaker 0]
I mean, that's a hefty price tag, but probably not a lot for a billionaire. But also very specific. Right? Yeah. That's true, actually.

[00:35:46] - [Speaker 0]
It's because this is how much a first class ticket on the Titanic would have cost in 1912, adjusted for inflation today. Right. And so, actually, how much profit are they making? Because I'm just wondering, have they gone for that price? And then the markup is, like, huge.

[00:35:59] - [Speaker 0]
Do know what? It's probably a 100,000, and they're like, do know what? Let's be romantic. Yeah. Make it a $105,129 just so they can have that titanic connection.

[00:36:09] - [Speaker 0]
That's what's happening here. I see. I see. So they list 54 spots for the June 2018 expedition, and almost immediately every single ticket sells out. But there's still no sub.

[00:36:19] - [Speaker 0]
And I mean, there is a sub, but it can't reach the Titanic. Yeah. So the pressure is on literally. Imagine they've got one of those things on the walls where they kinda have like a a a counter and like it's been this many days since the an implosion. Yeah.

[00:36:32] - [Speaker 0]
God. Yeah. Probably. And they never even got to use it. Jeez.

[00:36:35] - [Speaker 0]
So the pressure is obviously on. They expand their team to try and make target, mostly employing eager interns. So corner cutting, foreshadowing. Just saying. They continue modifying Titan's design between each test.

[00:36:47] - [Speaker 0]
Eventually, they replace the titanium endomes of the actual sub itself with carbon fiber ones. They increased the carbon fiber hole from 4.5 inches to five inches, so an extra half an inch. And by August 2017, with ten months to spare, they finally hit the winning design. And now the Titan is fully assembled. And it can reach the bottom?

[00:37:09] - [Speaker 0]
Apparently, according to their tests. Yeah. The final design boasted the largest viewport of any diving submersible ever built, so it's 20 inches wide. This scares me. It's made from acrylic.

[00:37:21] - [Speaker 0]
Okay. Yeah. That doesn't sound great, does it? No. What also scares me is that the controls were like the single wall mounted touchscreen where everything is powered.

[00:37:30] - [Speaker 0]
So if that breaks, you have no controls. Yeah. That doesn't sound good either. Connected to that was a Logitech f seven one zero Bluetooth PC gamepad. Basically, a games controller that they bought from Amazon.

[00:37:43] - [Speaker 0]
Stockton says, like, the review's really good. Great. And to start and stop everything on the sub just like your Kia, a single button. So you press that button, everything comes to life, powers on, and then they're ready to go. And the fact that this is only gonna be up and running, like, ten months before they actually take a passenger Mhmm.

[00:37:59] - [Speaker 0]
Doesn't feel like long enough to go through enough testing. I think they're gonna continue to test. Like, the design is ready. It's ready to be handed over to kind of Ocean Gate for doing sea trials before a passenger gets on. So they've got ten months to do all that.

[00:38:14] - [Speaker 0]
And I don't think I personally would have ever gone into that knowing what I know now. But then I guess these people didn't know that. No. But this is touted as the cutting edge of technology, and so often we forgive that. When someone says this is the cutting edge of what technology can produce, we go, wow.

[00:38:31] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. But Without actually understanding. Yeah. Stockton's saying this though. Of course.

[00:38:35] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. But you need some people to other people that are credible to back this up. Stockton says, this is not your grandfather's submarine. Would your grandfather's submarine have Bluetooth speakers? Would it be steered with a gaming controller?

[00:38:48] - [Speaker 0]
And get this, he says it's made for teenagers to be able to throw around and that they keep a couple spares on board just in case. Just in case of what? You lobbered at someone? Yeah. Why are you doing that?

[00:38:58] - [Speaker 0]
Why are you lobbing a game controller? And they're probably, like, £50 on Amazon. They are. I think they're, like, $69.99. There we go then.

[00:39:06] - [Speaker 0]
That wasn't the only part of the submarine that was a DIY jobbie. The seating grab handles that people could hold on to while they were kinda going down, they were bought from Camping World on their website. The rubber flooring that was sourced from a welding supply shop. The toilet, considering the size of the sub and how cramped it looks when we've seen images, they did have a toilet, believe it or not, which they bought from a container store. Where was the toilet?

[00:39:30] - [Speaker 0]
I don't think I've actually seen pictures of it. Apparently, it's at the very back of the sub. Right? The only thing separating you and the rest of the passengers is a curtain. Really?

[00:39:38] - [Speaker 0]
Mhmm. So you really don't wanna be doing your number twos down there? No. Thanks. As a man, I only feel safe knowing that there's a wooden door separating me from anyone else while I poop.

[00:39:47] - [Speaker 0]
It's the only way. And the fact is you've spent a $100,000 on a ticket, and this is the not expecting luxury, obviously. You you But I expect a wooden door. Yes. Basically, this DIY approach was practical because it meant that maintenance was super cheap.

[00:40:02] - [Speaker 0]
It's the same as your Kia blinker. Right? It breaks. You go to the official Kia garage, they charge $250. But if you go to Halfords, can get the same part for, like, $30.

[00:40:10] - [Speaker 0]
That's the thinking here. I feel like you've got something against my Kia. I like your Kia. I'm a counterpiece of the fact that it beeps at me every time I get into it, but I love It wants you to get out. Yeah.

[00:40:19] - [Speaker 0]
Get out. Get out. Get out. So I imagine there's just no warranty on this thing, basically. Yeah.

[00:40:24] - [Speaker 0]
Definitely not. I mean, it's it feels like what Blue Peter would do when they make their own at home with some sticky back plastic and whatever. It's a heart attack. Yeah. So basically, to me, there's just a lot of corner cutting here, which as we know, when this story was unfolding, they got a lot of criticism for.

[00:40:41] - [Speaker 0]
Obviously, the game controller itself, even though it is standard in military kind of crafts, Far be it's wired in rather than being wireless, but these are the types of things that they got a lot of criticism for as a symbol of the hubris, being too arrogant and cocky with it rather than doing things safely. But when it came to the carbon fiber pressure vessel itself, so the hole, the literally the part that's keeping everyone alive, Stockton says there's just no room for corner cutting. And we'll get into that in a minute, but that's another little bit of foreshadowing for us. Okay. But so the it's made of carbon fiber.

[00:41:12] - [Speaker 0]
What about these Russian subs that they used that actually could go down safely, I guess? Steel, titanium, like things that we know just cannot implode under a huge amount of pressure. But he's chosen carbon fiber because it's lighter, cheaper, I'm guessing. And he's convinced it's stronger, but it's not. So in the event of a malfunction, Titan did have a backup safety system.

[00:41:33] - [Speaker 0]
It was actually the sub itself. Right? Because it's made from carbon fiber, it's neutrally buoyant in the water. This meant that if there was ever a problem, it would just float straight back up to the surface. Right?

[00:41:44] - [Speaker 0]
Because of this, in order to make it sink, they had to attach sandbags to the outside of the Titan. So when the dive is done, they could then just use a drop weight mechanism triggered from the inside of the sub to drop the bags, and then it would just float up to the surface. Right? In the event of the crew being all unconscious, the hooks holding the sandbags are designed to naturally dissolve. So no matter what, the sub would just always float up to the surface.

[00:42:07] - [Speaker 0]
And would it do it at a certain speed? Because, obviously, you need to do things at certain intervals because of the bends and the pressure and everything. Necessary for this because you're inside a pressure contained sub anyway. So you don't have to stagger the way that you go down as far as I'm aware. I think maybe you have to do some safety checks on the whole.

[00:42:23] - [Speaker 0]
They yeah. We've gone down a thousand meters. How's the sub doing? Let's do some checks, etcetera. But in terms of, like, it affecting you as a person, it's not really needed because it's all pressure neutral on the inside.

[00:42:32] - [Speaker 0]
Okay. So by January 2018, Titan is officially handed over to the Ocean Gates operation team, and everything is ready for June. By then, while testing Titan in The Bahamas, they get struck by lightning. It completely fries all of the electronics. And now the entire June expedition has to be postponed another year to 02/2019.

[00:42:52] - [Speaker 0]
This for paying customers as well? Yeah. Why a whole year? Because they need to rebuild the whole thing. They can only really go out during the summer months.

[00:43:00] - [Speaker 0]
Right? Okay. So they've got a very small window. So if you miss that, then there's no point going December, etcetera. Right.

[00:43:04] - [Speaker 0]
You gotta wait till the next year. But by December 2018, the electronics, they've all been refitted. Stockton pilots a solo mission to 4,000 meters, making him only the second person after James Cameron to dive that deep. It's also first of the world for submersibles made of carbon fiber as well, so that's a huge win for him, which for Stockton finally validates basically everything that he has been working towards. He's like, see, you all told me this couldn't be done.

[00:43:30] - [Speaker 0]
Well, you just fucking did it, bitches. Foreshadowing. Yeah. I also think the lightning storm was also foreshadowing. Almost like a warning as if you gave you shouldn't really be doing this.

[00:43:41] - [Speaker 0]
Yes. Exactly. In April 2019, they dive again this time with a crew of four. They capture a ton of really cool four k video from the ocean floor, and now they think that they're ready for their first tourist mission to the Titanic. But out of the blue, they canceled the 2019 expedition.

[00:43:59] - [Speaker 0]
The official story is that they were having issues with the towing vessel that physically takes the sub to the ship and deploys it. But privately, something worse was happening. According to a leaked report, they had actually discovered a crack in the carbon fiber hole where the layers are starting to kind of separate. The report basically said that a catastrophic failure was inevitable and that they needed to rebuild the entire hole from scratch. So they hadn't even started yet, and now they're like, oh, yeah.

[00:44:25] - [Speaker 0]
The whole thing's fucked. So the submersible has managed to get to the ocean floor, gone 4,000 feet, but the pressure is now it's it's not lasting. It's not very durable at all. That's a perfect way of saying it's not durable. It's not lasting more than a few trips.

[00:44:40] - [Speaker 0]
So this is bad. It's really bad. And it's also not a good look for the tourists who'd previously signed up. It kinda dents their trust in OceanGate's capabilities a little. Yeah.

[00:44:49] - [Speaker 0]
Especially if you had booked the previous year. Now we had another year, and you're like, what? This has now been canceled again. So for now, it was back to the drawing board. But at the start of 2020, as we know, COVID hits.

[00:45:00] - [Speaker 0]
So this kind of buys them a bit of time to kind of get things sorted out a bit. Stockton manages to secure another $16,000,000 in partnership money with NASA and Boeing, and they pretty much helped redesign and manufacture a new hole. This time, though, it also comes with a brand new safety system. They call it the real time hole monitoring system. And, basically, the entire submersible is fitted with these acoustic sensors that can detect even minuscule stresses in real time in the carbon fiber hole.

[00:45:29] - [Speaker 0]
That way, if they ever sense that it was starting to crack, the pilot would then be warned, allowing them to kinda safely ascend or automatically, it would drop the sandbags and just force the thing to start floating up. Yeah. That sounds good and all, but I don't know how much time you'd have even with the slightest crack or whatever that the level of pressure is probably what's gonna happen. Exactly. And we know that this is a disaster waiting to happen.

[00:45:54] - [Speaker 0]
So by the 2021, they carry out a bunch of test manned missions around 4,000 meters deep, the same depth as obviously the Titanic. Everything goes smoothly. The telemetry is as expected, and they start to promote tickets for the 2022 expeditions. Again, passengers will be referred to as mission specialists, but now it has a sexy new price. Tickets adjusted for COVID inflation are now $250,000 per person.

[00:46:19] - [Speaker 0]
Woah. They sell out immediately. Did the other people get a refund then because they didn't know when they're gonna go back into the water? I guess they probably did get a refund or they all canceled. Would you wanna wait that long?

[00:46:30] - [Speaker 0]
I don't know. I guess if you are a huge fan of the Titanic, you'd be willing to wait and if you're rich enough. Yeah. Probably. And like I said, most of them sell to various millionaires and billionaires.

[00:46:40] - [Speaker 0]
There are, like, a couple of lottery winners on board as well. But some of the people are just regular Joe's who literally remortgaged their entire homes just to secure a spot on the Titan. Wow. That is something. The thing that they all have in common is that they were all Titaniacs, essentially.

[00:46:56] - [Speaker 0]
Tie they have a name? They call themselves Titaniacs. Yeah. Interesting. Completely obsessed with everything Titanic.

[00:47:02] - [Speaker 0]
So over the 2022 expedition, they make several trips down to the Titanic all with regular passengers on board. It all goes off without a hitch. It's perfect. And by the end of the season, Ocean Gate had done it. They had brought commercialized deep sea exploration to the world.

[00:47:19] - [Speaker 0]
And at this point, Stockton is already talking like he's a visionary. He tells journalists, I'd like to be remembered as an innovator. He says, general MacArthur once said, you're remembered for the rules that you break, and I've broken some rules to make this happen. But I've also broken them with logic and good engineering. Adam, this is what we call in the industry more foreshadowing.

[00:47:43] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. What other rules you've broken? He also says, they told me not to use carbon fiber with titanium. I did it anyway. Okay.

[00:47:51] - [Speaker 0]
That's. So kinda cringe. But they've had multiple missions then throughout June, I'm guessing, in 2022, and they've all gone off without a hitch. Yep. No issues.

[00:48:01] - [Speaker 0]
Everything's fine. Okay. Alright. Well, actually, to be fair, it sounds like they have turned a corner. Mhmm.

[00:48:06] - [Speaker 0]
But, obviously, they haven't. What did they skimp on? What what went wrong? Basically, at the end of the 2022 expedition, the Titan is brought back home to rest until the 2023 season. They store the Titan in what is basically a parking space outdoors in Newfoundland over the winter completely exposed to the elements.

[00:48:26] - [Speaker 0]
Okay. I think I've guessed it. So, obviously, this can't be good. Right? And it wasn't.

[00:48:31] - [Speaker 0]
Because in February 2023, after dusting the Titan off and preparing it for the coming season, they are plagued with dozens and dozens of malfunctions. They were only minor, but knowing what we know, these should have been, like, warning signs from, like, the heavens. They were also hit with, like, a bunch of bad weather, which meant it was likely that the June expedition would have to be canceled altogether. It was literally like the heavens were trying to prevent this next dive from happening entirely. Yeah.

[00:48:57] - [Speaker 0]
So it sounds like they should have really stored it at, like, a room temperature or whatever it was. Yeah. Not in a fucking car park. Do know what? Like, we've gone through about four chairs Mhmm.

[00:49:06] - [Speaker 0]
In the outside, those kind of string chairs Yeah. Because they can't survive a winter. Yeah. Exactly. They're not quite carbon fiber, but still.

[00:49:13] - [Speaker 0]
No. It's completely different. But all I'm saying is we tried to store them so they wouldn't break in the cold. So I just can't believe they would have thought that this was a good idea. So they're all on tender hooks, essentially.

[00:49:23] - [Speaker 0]
They don't know if they can actually do any of the dives this year. Every day, Ocean Gate, they study the weather looking for even the smallest window of clear weather to do a dive. Eventually, they spot the smallest opportunity opening up around about mid June. It was tiny and it was tight, but this would mean that they would be able to squeeze in one dive, one dive only. That would be dive 88, Titan's final dive.

[00:49:49] - [Speaker 0]
So Ocean Gate, they scrambled to prepare. They tow the Titan onto the launch ship that is called the polar prince. They quickly call around all the passengers or mission specialists to tell them that the mission was on and to get ready. They all start scrambling to catch flights to The USA. During the dive, Stockton was gonna be the pilot as he usually did, and assisting him onboard would be Titanic expert who is 77 year old Paul Henry Najaleh.

[00:50:14] - [Speaker 0]
One by one, the mission specialists, they start arriving. The first on board is a guy called Shahzadar Dawood, who is a 48 year old British Pakistani businessman from one of the richest families in the world. With him is his 19 year old son, Solomon. Shahzadar's wife, Christine, was originally scheduled to dive, but in the end, she gives up her spot to Solomon because he was dead set on breaking the Guinness World Record for the deepest Rubik's Cube solve. That's even a thing?

[00:50:42] - [Speaker 0]
Well, it is to him. So if I went into the Guinness Book World Records Mhmm. I would see, like, who did the Rubik's Cube in a plane, who's done it all these different places in the world, and he was going to do it deep down. Yeah. I don't know if they actually if he actually got the record authenticated.

[00:50:57] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Wow. But that's really must be gutting for the mother as well because, you know, I mean, obviously, she survived, but she almost, yeah, she gave up her seat. I imagine being 19 and being into Rubik's cubes, you probably wore your mother down in order to be honest. Like, can you imagine the guilt that she must be feeling as well?

[00:51:15] - [Speaker 0]
Not that she would have known either, but yeah. Instead, Christine and her daughter were gonna remain on board of the Polar Prince while they all went down. The fifth seat went to Hamish Harding. He's a 58 year old British billionaire and adventurer who is the current Guinness World Record holder for the fastest circumnavigation of Earth from both poles in a single aircraft. So he's a bit like a Amelia Earhart.

[00:51:37] - [Speaker 0]
I see. And so did Solomon hear that there was gonna be a world record breaker? He was like, hey. I wanna meet him. Solomon's probably looking at him thinking, yeah.

[00:51:44] - [Speaker 0]
But do you have a Guinness record for the deepest Rubik cube solve? I think not, mister. Yeah. But I think Hamish probably has a cooler record breaking. Yeah.

[00:51:53] - [Speaker 0]
Probably. Yeah. Hamish Harding was actually a last minute addition after the previous guy and his son actually canceled. So they are obviously counting their lucky stars that they did. Yeah.

[00:52:01] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. But Hamish, of course, seen this as an opportunity too good to miss. On Facebook, he posts my next adventure. I seem to say yes to everything, and I figure out the details later on. Someone called me a couple days ago and said, do you wanna go on the Titanic on a new sub that can reach the wreck?

[00:52:18] - [Speaker 0]
Of course, I said yes. So I appear to be off to the Titanic for a 4,000 meter dive, something I've always wanted to do but didn't think I'd get the chance so soon. I think, like, especially if they had a successful year previous year, you would say yes. You probably would sign up to this because you think, oh, wow. It's it is pretty safe forever.

[00:52:36] - [Speaker 0]
But I guess knowing what we know and knowing that's now immemorialized on Facebook for the whole world to see forever, it's quite sombering, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So they're all on board. The clear weather window is still holding.

[00:52:48] - [Speaker 0]
The crew and the mission specialists, they go through the expedition briefings. They watch a bunch of presentations. At one point, they even hold a ceremony honoring the 1,500 people who died on the Titanic. The mission specialists, they are advised to follow a low residue diet the day before, which basically just means no coffee. But I suspect it's because they don't want anyone pooping on the Titan.

[00:53:07] - [Speaker 0]
Low residue diet? Yeah. I have no idea what that means. No co yeah. But surely, so on the morning, don't have a coffee.

[00:53:13] - [Speaker 0]
Yes. Exactly. And then maybe not like a curry the night before or anything that's There is no curry. Just, you know, make sure you have something quite light, I imagine. Yeah.

[00:53:22] - [Speaker 0]
They were also told to make sure that they download all their favorite songs. The only rule was no country music was allowed. And when I read that, I cringed so hard because I imagine this is Stockton trying to be one of those really cringey instructors who've gone through this kind of briefing a million times before. So they just start injecting overly rehearsed kind of jokes into their, like, little pitch. Do you know what I mean?

[00:53:43] - [Speaker 0]
And everyone just laughs awkwardly. Yeah. Like, country music is back now. So but the thing That's true. Thanks to Beyonce.

[00:53:50] - [Speaker 0]
But, yeah, I vomited in my mouth a little bit. So is that because they play this music whilst they're going down? Like, that like, we'll make a playlist. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:53:59] - [Speaker 0]
On probably on your own personal iPhone or whatever. It's like three hours down. Yeah. So they they're gonna be waiting a long time. It's not like they're in flight entertainment.

[00:54:07] - [Speaker 0]
Exactly. So at 05:15AM on Sunday, 06/18/2023, the Polar Prince arrives just above the wreck of the Titanic. At 08:30AM, two dinghies ferry the Titan crew and the mission specialists to the launch platform. They all get into the Titan, and behind them, a crew assist bolts them all into the sub, 17 bolts around the actual viewport of the actual sub itself. At 08:55AM, the launch platform is flooded, and they're lowered down into the ocean about 30 feet.

[00:54:40] - [Speaker 0]
At 09:14AM, the Titan is disengaged and finally begins its 4,000 meter descent. It was gonna take them two hours, and I'm told it's completely pitch black because they have to keep the floodlights off to save kind of battery for when they actually reach the wreck. So you're just sitting there bored listening to your country music or not because it's banned. At 09:18AM, the Polar Prince sends its first routine com check to which the Titan replies back forty four seconds later. From there, the automatic pings continue to ping the Titan every five to ten seconds.

[00:55:14] - [Speaker 0]
This tells them basically that they still have contact with the sub. At this point, everything is running smoothly. Around one hour and forty five minutes later, Titan reaches a depth of 2,000 meters. The Titan initiates another manual comm check, which reads all good here. At 10:47AM, the Titan messages for a third time reporting that it had dropped one of its weights.

[00:55:37] - [Speaker 0]
This is basically a sign that they're nearing the bottom and beginning to kinda slow their descent. Right? Six seconds later, the Polar Prince receives their expected automatic ping as expected and following the same pattern. And then six seconds later, nothing. Two more minutes go by.

[00:55:54] - [Speaker 0]
Still no automatic ping. At 10:49AM, the polar prince sends the message saying lost tracking. Again, they wait. There's just no response, Adam. They keep just sending these messages every couple minutes, but each time, there's just no response.

[00:56:09] - [Speaker 0]
And, eventually, there's just nothing that they can do. They aren't even sure if this is a malfunction or kinda just interference from the ocean. Mhmm. All they can do is just wait and hope that if there was a power outage that the Titan's backup would kick in, it would drop the sandbags automatically and then just ascend back up to the surface. It took, like, one hour forty five minutes to get down there in the first place, so it'd be the same amount of time before they drift back up to the surface.

[00:56:35] - [Speaker 0]
So all they can do is just wait. Is that kind of the protocol then? If we lose track of you, we can't communicate, don't carry on, just come back to the surface. I guess so. Yeah.

[00:56:46] - [Speaker 0]
And I guess if there was a power outage that can do anything, those things would dissolve. Yeah. The sandbags would drop and they would just float up. Yeah. Okay.

[00:56:53] - [Speaker 0]
The fact is that it just never does. So they are sitting there watching binoculars out on the polar prints, scanning the ocean to see anything pop up, and nothing happens. I wonder at what point do they panic? Do they just concerned? But then I guess three hours after losing contact, that's when they're thinking.

[00:57:11] - [Speaker 0]
I guess it depends what's typical. What's happened before? We don't know. We don't know if they've lost contact before, and they've been like, it's fine. We've regained contact, like, an hour later.

[00:57:19] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. So we just gotta wait. But at this time, they are literally just waiting. Yeah. The following morning on Monday, 06/19/2023, the US Coast Guard launches a search and rescue mission.

[00:57:32] - [Speaker 0]
They coordinate with the Canadian authorities. They scramble a bunch of helicopters and ships and other submarines. They drop a network of these solar boys to just monitor for any movement that might indicate that the Titan was trapped on the seafloor somewhere. At this point, they're hopeful. Like, they still think that the Titan has floated up to the surface somewhere, but it's just been swept away by some kind of current or something.

[00:57:54] - [Speaker 0]
But if this was the case, that's a problem because remember, they are bolted in from the outside, which means that if they didn't find them soon, they were going to all suffocate. Yeah. And this is twenty four hours afterwards the next morning? Yeah. They estimate that the Tyson's got ninety six hours of breathable air left.

[00:58:09] - [Speaker 0]
Okay. The rescue teams, they end up searching an area of 7,600 square miles of ocean. Wow. So just for perspective, that's larger than the state of New Jersey. That's huge.

[00:58:21] - [Speaker 0]
Like looking for a needle in a haystack, I imagine. To make things even harder, the clear weather window is now completely closed. So the search is literally being carried out in thick fog. One of the aircrafts picks up an unusual banging noise seemingly repeating at regular intervals every thirty minutes. So they divert their ROVs, which are basically these unmanned robotic mini submersibles, which are searching around the wreck of the Titanic, and they divert these to where they hear the sounds coming from.

[00:58:49] - [Speaker 0]
Of course, while all of this is going on, the media pick up on the story. Straight away, this is absolutely gold because it becomes like the baby Jess Gore the Challenger disaster. The thing that anchors this as this massive news story is the idea that these people are lost out in the Titanic with just thirty hours of oxygen left or whatever it might be. And around the clock, they display these countdown timer showing when the auction was due to run out, and everyone is just watching on Tinder hooks. But I guess at this point, the media picked up on it because they know that there is this search and rescue operation, and I'm guessing they've been informed that there's, like, a two to three day window of being able to find these people in this.

[00:59:27] - [Speaker 0]
And they're quite confident at this point, maybe, based on those that are searching that they could find them. You would think. Right? The truth is actually very different, and we're gonna come on to that. This is a full circle moment where this type of reporting first started with baby Jessica in the nineteen eighties.

[00:59:40] - [Speaker 0]
Right? The question everyone was asking is, will they be rescued? Will they all suffocate? The only difference is that 30 later, we now have social media, and it is all literally going off. Hundreds of memes start flooding the Internet.

[00:59:56] - [Speaker 0]
People are actually needlessly cruel. It's really such a shame with memes of the Titanic next to kind of a PSP warning message saying, please reconnect your controller. That's a bit insensitive. Tasteless. On the polar prince, Christine Daewoo and her daughter, they are desperate for any news.

[01:00:12] - [Speaker 0]
So, of course, they're following all of this discourse super closely, only seeing people being really needlessly horrible and cruel about their father and their brother who's just died. Eventually, Christine says that she just starts losing hope off the ninety sixth hour mark because that is when if they had survived, when all the oxygen would run out. Yeah. Like, are slim anyway, so you'd have to assume the worst. So Hamish Harding's stepson, Brian Sass, he posts on Facebook saying that he was going to a Blink one eight two concert.

[01:00:41] - [Speaker 0]
He wrote, it might sound distasteful, but my family would have wanted me at that show. It's my favorite band. Music helps me through tough times. You know? That feels a bit.

[01:00:50] - [Speaker 0]
It's awful. Yeah. Later, he tweets, yes, please, to an OnlyFans model asking, can I sit on your face? So he's basically a piece of shit. Is it the media that's picked up on this in terms of what his whereabouts is?

[01:01:02] - [Speaker 0]
He doesn't care about his family? It seems like that. I mean, who does that? Just don't say anything, in my opinion. Does he think that it's you know, everything's gonna be okay?

[01:01:11] - [Speaker 0]
Who knows? He gets so much backlash for this. Cardi b goes live on TikTok saying, this is why people hate you spoiled billionaire brats. This man is missing, and you're out there shaking dicks at a concert. I'd rather be poor and loved than rich and ignored.

[01:01:26] - [Speaker 0]
Mhmm. That's what's so interesting about the story because these people were millionaires, even billionaires. People just have zero empathy for them at all. The discourse switches to essentially they had it coming or this is a clear example of billionaire hubris. A lot of people start comparing the reporting of this or the lack thereof to the fishing boat that capsized just a week earlier where 700 migrants off the coast of Greece just capsized and five hundred people died.

[01:01:53] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. I remember this because people were annoyed that this was getting so much news and attention when you've got these poor migrants and everything that that actually lose their lives and don't seem to get a look in or people seem to care. Yeah. That's it. People were like, there was no international rescue operation there.

[01:02:09] - [Speaker 0]
There were no sonar boys. There were no press conferences. There was no countdown time is ticking for them. Apparently, the Greek coast guard weren't even that far away and yet they chose to do nothing. And the press barely just reported on it.

[01:02:21] - [Speaker 0]
And it's true. When you think about it, it's a really interesting reflection on what society has become. Maybe it's just that we've had far too many migrant ships capsized and it's no longer newsworthy, or maybe it's a reflection on where we are as a society today. Like, you could blame the media for not reporting on it, but the media responds to what people wanna watch. Right?

[01:02:42] - [Speaker 0]
So can you really blame them? You're right because they're driven by viewership and the stories that they churn focus on. Yeah. And you're right with migrants and stuff like that and immigration, that's an everyday occurrence. Right?

[01:02:55] - [Speaker 0]
And so there's that's nothing new. There's probably another one like a few weeks before that or whatever. Whereas this is a freak accident, which I guess is it's novel in that sense. And so it is gonna have more interest. And also because of perhaps the lack of empathy towards these rich people, again, that's gonna drum up a lot of hate or at least interest in the media.

[01:03:16] - [Speaker 0]
Basically, this is saying that the problem is us as a society, and that we've been desensitized to the basic humanity. As a society, there's probably an element of truth there. Yeah. Obama eventually calls us out saying that this is an example of obscene inequality. This is indicative of the degree to which people's life chances have grown so disparate.

[01:03:38] - [Speaker 0]
Mhmm. And he ain't fucking wrong, is he? No. Of course, throughout all this reporting, various people start coming forward. Because as we know from the Challenger disaster and the baby Jessica story, talking heads is what keeps that news cycle ticking.

[01:03:51] - [Speaker 0]
They are all commenting on how all the warning signs were there from the very start. One person says that Stockton had consulted them back in 2015 about the viability of using carbon fiber in a deep sea submersible, and they talk about how they outright warned him against this and say that Stockton just ended up getting really defensive. He told them, like, I've done the math, and I'm confident in my engineering, so just back off. And other people say that they became really worried that Stockton planned to stop carrying actual tourists on board. Before, they were like, oh, just let him do what he's doing.

[01:04:24] - [Speaker 0]
He's not harming anyone. But now he's physically planning on taking actual people down there, and that's when they were like, no dice. But this was before NASA and Boeing got involved. Right? That so I'm not trying to excuse it, but I'm just trying to say once they got involved, they made it more durable, at least for that season, submersible.

[01:04:43] - [Speaker 0]
Was anyone criticizing them? Because they've almost signed off on this, haven't they? We're gonna get to them in just a second. It's very interesting. Okay.

[01:04:51] - [Speaker 0]
But basically, one guy begged Stockton to get Titan certified by a regulatory agency, which is the process that every commercialized kinda submarine on the earth has to go through to prove that it's built to code, it's been tested, and it's safe. Right? But Stockton completely refuses to go through that certification process. Mhmm. His response is basically regulation is the enemy of innovation, and getting Titan certified would just take far too long.

[01:05:16] - [Speaker 0]
It will cost too much money and just end up slowing him down. The reality is he probably knew that the Titan would fail the certification process, so he didn't wanna deal with the paperwork and the questions that would come from that. But even people who were initially supporting him started changing their tune. One guy called Carl Stanley, who worked for a deep sea exploration company in Honduras, says that in 02/2019, he was out on an expedition with Stockton when he hears a sharp loud crack from the hole, which just ends up freaking him out. He later sends an email to Stockton saying, I think there's a defect near the flange.

[01:05:49] - [Speaker 0]
It's only going to get a lot worse. The question is whether it fails catastrophically or not. My recommendation is that the Titan undergo more testing before you do anything else. He says if you push forward with Titanic dives this season, it won't be financial pressure driving you. It's going to be your ego.

[01:06:07] - [Speaker 0]
You're doing this to prove people wrong, and that is not the right reason. Wow. So someone that was on his side to flip like that Yeah. That's quite interesting. The other thing I just wanna go back to is you said about the flange not being right.

[01:06:20] - [Speaker 0]
As almost like the left phalangee. The left phalangee. This submarine has no flange. Just Friends reference. Obviously, a very horrible situation, but, yeah, I didn't realize that was a thing.

[01:06:30] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. It's a thing. But all this pushback, Stockton just sees us as a personal attack on him and on innovation. His constant go to response is that he's had the best engineers from NASA and Boeing and the University of Washington's applied physics lab working on this. They cannot be wrong.

[01:06:47] - [Speaker 0]
So when these big names and their involvement start to emerge, ABC News reaches out to them for comment. All three of them deny the level of involvement Stockton had been claiming. Really? So, Gabe, because before, I can understand maybe it's his ego, but also he's had this information corroborated by these industry leaders. So you feel like, okay.

[01:07:10] - [Speaker 0]
That's why he's pushing forward because other people have backed him up. It's giving him credibility. Yeah. But now you're saying, actually. Mhmm.

[01:07:16] - [Speaker 0]
But the he was boasting about the fact that he had Boeing involved. What did they say then? So the University of Washington's applied physics lab said that it had nothing to do with designing, engineering, or testing the title whatsoever. In fact, they said that they were forced to sever their relationship with Ocean Gate over engineering disagreements. Apparently, they and Ocean Gate had completely different mindsets.

[01:07:39] - [Speaker 0]
For Ocean Gate, it was all about pace, speed, and innovation. But for the applied physics lab, it was all about doing things right. And because they couldn't agree to see iron iron on that, they just cut ties. But then this wasn't made public, I guess, because it's just a falling out with a partner. Yeah.

[01:07:53] - [Speaker 0]
But then I thought, if there's gonna be people's health and safety, surely there's someone else you need to flag it to. Or, I don't know, put something on your website to say, we are not working with this person. So NASA, they said that they only consulted on materials but didn't test anything. And Boeing insisted that they had zero input on the design. So what's happening here is that these huge companies were probably involved at some point likely at a minor level or very briefly, and Ocean Gate was using their name to add credibility to their mission.

[01:08:24] - [Speaker 0]
And I get it. People do this all the time. I work for a company that secured a huge contract with a major industry player, but the deal fell through, like, a few weeks later. But still, because we worked with them, even if it's just for a couple weeks, we still list them on our website as a partner because it makes us look good. Yeah.

[01:08:40] - [Speaker 0]
I get that. But but I imagine Stockton, he's consulting with them on a specific thing, but perhaps only giving them certain information. Like, what materials would you suggest for this or whatever? He wants to make the carbon fiber work. That's the thing that he's not budging on, and they're all saying no carbon fiber.

[01:08:56] - [Speaker 0]
Are they? Apparently, a Boeing's material engineer flat out warned stocks not to proceed with carbon fiber. In his report, he included a graph showing kind of the structural failure risks to drum the message home included a little skull and crossbones drawn below the 4,000 meter mark. So you've got people literally drawing death symbols, and Stockton's like, stop suppressing my innovation, guys. Yeah.

[01:09:19] - [Speaker 0]
You're what? You're ruining my creativity. Yeah. He never support me in any of my endeavors. What a fool.

[01:09:26] - [Speaker 0]
Then there's a company that built Titan's acrylic viewpoint. When they find out that Stockton was planning a mission to the Titanic, they were stunned because their viewport was only rated for 666 meters. So a scary symbol there, mark of the beast, and they were planning on diving to 4,000 meters, yet Stockton installed it anyway. So how do these brands and companies not I don't know. If you know that what could be happening.

[01:09:53] - [Speaker 0]
They're just supplying materials. Right? Just because I buy, let's say, some fertilizer from Amazon, they don't have a right to tell me how to use it. Yeah. That's true.

[01:10:03] - [Speaker 0]
They'll probably flag it to the police. But do you understand what I mean? Yeah. That's probably in the legal print or whatever in terms of using these products. But I don't know.

[01:10:10] - [Speaker 0]
I just feel like if there was so much concern for people's well-being, especially turning it into a commercial thing, what was there not more press or news about this? Yeah. But get this. On top of all of this, the hubcaps of the Titan, they were physically glued on. What are the hubcaps?

[01:10:26] - [Speaker 0]
That's the viewport. So this is like this hemisphere dome thing. Yep. So that the components of that wall just glued. That doesn't feel secure at that depth.

[01:10:36] - [Speaker 0]
No. It should all just be fucking steel or titanium. Yeah. It just seems that everyone around Ocean Gate, people who had worked with them or even past employees, all eventually became seriously concerned that this is all going to end in tragedy. In March 2018, 40 different experts, engineers, educators, and loads of Stockton's own peers from the Marine Technology Society, they all wrote and signed a letter urging him to reconsider.

[01:11:04] - [Speaker 0]
They said that they were worried that the Titanic was about to become more than just a metaphor. Out. Powerful, but sadly true. When Soxton gets hold of a copy of that letter, he calls him up in a rage, and he tells them that he's gonna leave the association if they try to force him to pull out. And they tell him, you can't leave because simply by doing what Ocean Gate does, you're automatically in that brotherhood, and so you have a responsibility to public safety.

[01:11:30] - [Speaker 0]
And so Stockton reminds him that, actually, the Tyson wasn't bound by any US regulations since they are registered in The Bahamas. This guy, he just he doesn't care, does he? Fair enough. You don't you wanna crack on with your own plan and not be, like, suppressed or whatever it might be. But this is people's health and safety on the line.

[01:11:48] - [Speaker 0]
He's just so arrogant to think that he is right when you've got this many credible people saying don't do it. Yeah. Exactly. It's the hubris of it all. It's the arrogance.

[01:11:55] - [Speaker 0]
It's the overconfidence. So according to him, the Marine Technology Society, they can just go suck it. And this is why Titan's passengers are called mission specialists and given jobs to do on board. It's illegal to transport passengers on an unclassified experimental submersible, but it's not illegal to transport crew. Plus, if a crew member dies, it's far less troublesome for Ocean Gate itself, less paperwork.

[01:12:20] - [Speaker 0]
Oh. Even tensions within Ocean Gate were starting to heat up when Stockton refuses to listen to engineers' concerns altogether. A guy named David Lockridge, he is hired as a safety inspector on board, and he says that in 02/2018, Stockton had made his job completely impossible to carry out. When David reported several issues with the carbon fiber hole, he requested that Ocean Gate carry out a complete scan to check for any damage. Mhmm.

[01:12:46] - [Speaker 0]
The issue was that Titan had been coated in what they call rhino leather, which is basically like a truck bed liner. Basically, this makes it impossible to do any scans without it being removed. Stockton completely refuses to remove that liner. So David was like, okay. Plan b.

[01:13:01] - [Speaker 0]
Give me access to the telemetry and the internal documentation so I can carry out an analysis against that data. And, again, Stockton says, no dice. David has no choice but to write up his report detailing his findings, including the complete lack of cooperation from Stockton himself. And, of course, after submitting that report in 02/2018, he's fired, and he's given just ten minutes to pack up his desk and leave. He's behaving like a six year old.

[01:13:26] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. And the thing is these poor people that have signed up to this are probably not aware of just what's stopping us from They think he's a visionary, an innovator, an incredible guy. It's probably the same situation with Elon Musk. People look at him I know he's an absolute loser now, but people looked at him at one point going, wow. He's a genius.

[01:13:43] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. But, actually, what's going on behind the scenes? Yeah. Yeah. And we know that.

[01:13:46] - [Speaker 0]
He throws temper tantrums. He thinks he's smart. He thinks he's clever. He's just not. He's an idiot.

[01:13:51] - [Speaker 0]
This Stockton is this? I'm talking about Elon Musk. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's the same parallel.

[01:13:56] - [Speaker 0]
At a later inquest, David talks about a time during a dive on Cyclops one where they were taking passengers down to see a shipwreck. And David had to keep reminding Stockton to keep his distance away from the wreck. But, of course, Stockton knew better, and surprise, surprise, they slammed directly into the wreck, and they get wedged in. Stockton apparently goes into full blown panic, and David is just doing everything he can to just keep him calm and just, like, keep everything going. He's asking Stockton, just hand me over the control.

[01:14:25] - [Speaker 0]
Stockton just completely refuses. He's frantically smashing the controller buttons, literally doing a Mortal Kombat combo, which just results in them getting even more wedged in. Eventually, a passenger has to scream, just give him the fucking controller, to which in a huff, Stockton lobs the controller, it hits David in the head, all the buttons pop off. They were stuck under the sea at 3,500 meters. Jeez.

[01:14:49] - [Speaker 0]
What happened then? Basically, David manages to reattach the buttons, and within fifteen minutes, he's able to free them. But Stockton wasn't letting him get near the control. Got this weird power play. Yeah.

[01:15:01] - [Speaker 0]
Later on board, he's dubbed a hero. That's David. And now Stockton looks like a complete fool. And from that moment, he starts to put in plans to push David out of the business. And eventually, he's fired after David files that 2018 report.

[01:15:14] - [Speaker 0]
You know what? This isn't the first time where you hear of, like, CEOs just with their egos where they just can't be told or are worried about some being upstaged by someone. Yeah. I just I find it fascinating that they don't do things for the greater good or for the whole business. Yeah.

[01:15:29] - [Speaker 0]
It is almost like a kinda twisted logic in that every bit of pushback you see, you think it's an attack. It's a defensive thing. You become extraordinarily paranoid because people don't want people to be successful sometimes, but a lot of people do. This is jealousy, I think. I remember an old boss, which I won't go into detail, but it's a self sabotage that you do Yeah.

[01:15:51] - [Speaker 0]
Just at the hands of trying not to say face or anything like that. Yeah. That's it. Or lose face, I should say. Again, all about ego.

[01:15:57] - [Speaker 0]
Exactly as you said. So David, he contacts Osha, and he enrolls himself in the whistleblowing protection program. Basically, he's priming himself to blow this whole thing open and expose Stockton's negligence. But Stockton turns around, and he sues him for breach of contracts, fraud, and misappropriation of trade secrets. But as soon as David countersues for serious safety concerns, Stockton just does everything he can to keep it all from going to trial because, of course, that's gonna expose everything.

[01:16:24] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. And so in 02/2018, they just end up settling out of court. Now remember earlier when I said that Hamish Harding, he was like a last minute addition to the mission specialists. Mhmm. Because, of course, someone had pulled out.

[01:16:37] - [Speaker 0]
Well, that person was a real estate developer in Las Vegas, a guy called Jay Bloom. He and his son were supposed to be on what turned out to be obviously Tyson's final dive, but they backed out again over safety concerns. He had heard on the grapevine that it was extraordinarily dangerous and they failed a load of these tests. And so Hamish took his spots. But Jay later says that when he looks at the photograph of the father and son who are on the Titan, he's like, this could have easily been us.

[01:17:06] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. I mean, he's lucky to have got wind of that, but it's just one of those things, like, how much can you do to try and get something out there? Because it looks like David did the best that he could, and then he settled out of court. So, again, this was just a tragedy waiting to happen, and people all over could see it, but not Stockton. And it's not like people just stood by and let this happen.

[01:17:25] - [Speaker 0]
Right? It wasn't negligence on their part. People did have concerns, but it just never saved the day, basically. So the search for the titan is still in full swing on June 22, four days after it loses contact with the polar prince. All the oxygen countdown timers on the news have all reached zero.

[01:17:40] - [Speaker 0]
Pretty much all hope is lost at this point. When suddenly an ROV searching around the Titanic spots the tail cone of the Titan about 500 meters away from the wreck, Soon after, they find more debris scattered across the surrounding area. It's clear that the wreckage was consistent with what they called a catastrophic loss of chamber pressure. Basically, it imploded. And a few hours later, the US Coast Guard, they tweeted then an update saying that they found the debris field, which they confirmed at a press conference later that afternoon.

[01:18:13] - [Speaker 0]
And if you remember from the reporting, the media were pushing this narrative that the subhead simply lost contacts and might be bobbing up on the surface slowly running out of oxygen. Right? Here's the thing. They knew without a doubt that the most likely outcome was that the Titan had imploded. They knew that a loud bang had been reported by the crew onboard of the Polar Prince just six seconds after they had lost contact.

[01:18:39] - [Speaker 0]
Even the navy had detected an acoustic signature consistent with an implosion. Most of the search was focused on finding debris with a small number of people looking for a possibility that they had floated up. All of that information was shared with the media, but the media chose to omit that just so they could keep pushing that kind of rescue narrative. Will they find them? Won't they find them?

[01:19:02] - [Speaker 0]
Oxygen running out. Keep watching. Stay tuned. Be hopeful. It was all the same kind of storytelling that made baby Jessica and the Challenger disaster so captivating at the time.

[01:19:12] - [Speaker 0]
Like, would baby Jessica be rescued from the well? Would they find the Challenger crew floating in the ocean? Just it's the same thing. Isn't that just the sickest thing that you've ever heard in your life? And this is all, like, news stations, isn't it?

[01:19:24] - [Speaker 0]
It's not like it's just one or two. So do you almost have to, like, follow suit because others are doing that, Or can you, like, break the mold there and actually just report the fact? I think it's probably even worse nowadays because there's so many twenty four hour news networks out there, so you're competing. Right? Mhmm.

[01:19:40] - [Speaker 0]
Who is telling the most compelling story? Yeah. Who's gonna keep you hooked yet? BBC News twenty four, whatever, CNN, this, that, the other. It's so sick.

[01:19:50] - [Speaker 0]
So from early on, they knew that the titan had imploded. Almost certainly the second that they lost contact. They say that the implosion would have meant instantaneous death, which I guess probably provided some degree of comfort to the families of the people who died. However, some experts do believe that there would have been cracking noises at least a minute before that implosion. So, yeah, they would have known what's about to happen.

[01:20:12] - [Speaker 0]
Especially considering one of Titan's key safety features was that acoustic system monitoring for warping. Like, they would've heard the acoustic feedback building up at least a couple minutes before. And would they have heard that back on the boat as well? Like, when they're sending signals back and forth about how things are going? It's a good question.

[01:20:29] - [Speaker 0]
I don't know where the monitoring system was. Was it just sequestered to the actual submersible itself, or did it feed back up to the PODER prints? I don't know. You kinda want it feeding back to the prints to kinda know, like, actually, something's going wrong. Yeah.

[01:20:42] - [Speaker 0]
Get get him back. James Cameron says he is struck by the similarity to the Titanic disaster itself where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. He says it's really quite surreal, and here we are again at the same place. Now there's one wreck lying next to the other wreck for the same goddamn reason. Yeah.

[01:21:05] - [Speaker 0]
That is weird. The fact that both, like, laying next to each other. I think, you know, a warning for anyone else that wants to go discover the Titanic just Don't use carbon fiber. Don't use carbon fiber and listen to people around you. Exactly.

[01:21:18] - [Speaker 0]
In the weeks that followed the implosion, they do manage to sell a lot of the debris, which included cables, shredder panels, but also what they believe to be human remains. Oh, no. The debris was taken to Newfoundland for further analysis. And a few weeks later, in July 2023, Ocean Gate announces that they were suspending all operations altogether. And they basically, they scrubbed their entire website of all of its content.

[01:21:42] - [Speaker 0]
A new CEO, a guy called Gordon Gardner, was appointed to deal specifically with a legal minefield that was literally coming straight for them. What a job that you're signing up for to go on board just to kind of probably close down the company and just deal with that. The Marine Board of Investigation began planning formal hearings to gather a bunch of testimony from different witnesses and experts and basically issue recommendations on how to prevent something like this from happening ever again. This is where we get all that testimony from David Lockridge and also a bunch of other experts and people connected to the story. And they all paint the same picture, a culture that ignored warnings, dismissed experts, and gambled with people's lives.

[01:22:22] - [Speaker 0]
And at the crux of all of this was Stockton Rush who wanted to leave his mark on history. Remember, he grew up in the shadow of a two hundred and fifty year prominent ancestry. His dad was a decorated marine president-elect of the Bohemian club. So I understand the pressure. I just don't understand the way he went about things.

[01:22:41] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. I guess he just wanted to make a name for himself, doesn't he? And he has. He's gone down in history, but not for the right reasons. Actually, someone wrote that Stockton knew how this would end one way or another, either literally or figuratively in the biggest bang in human history, and that's what happened.

[01:22:58] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. And, really, it's not like there was just one single point of failure. Right? There were far too many variables, far too many complications, like the fact that they use three dissimilar materials, carbon fiber, titanium, and acrylic, all glued together, all expanding and contracting at different rates under different pressures. Eventually, Titan failed in literally every way that a sub can fail.

[01:23:21] - [Speaker 0]
And the thing is, though, this is far from over because in October 2024, the US attorney's office began interviewing former Ocean Gate employees, and there is a strong likelihood that criminal charges are coming their way. The family of Paul Henry Nojolet, they'd already filed a $50,000,000 wrongful death lawsuit. Basically, they're alleging that Ocean Gate had misled them about Tyson's condition and that Stockton died knowing exactly what was happening. In the lawsuit, they referenced the telemetry from the Polar Prince, which shows that the Tyson dropped sandbags ninety minutes into the dive. So that's fifteen minutes before the thing actually imploded, and they're arguing that this was Titan's attempt at aborting the actual mission, yet Stockton continued to dive down.

[01:24:06] - [Speaker 0]
Really? Yep. Wow. So the crew likely knew that something was happening when that sandbag dropped. And they had to, what, cover it up almost?

[01:24:17] - [Speaker 0]
I guess it just kept going. Going as fine. It's just dropped as a malfunction, whatever. But here's the thing. Right?

[01:24:22] - [Speaker 0]
The lawsuits, they don't look very hopeful because Titan was operating in international waters. Every passenger signed a waiver where the word death appeared eight times across three pages. So the likelihood of them actually getting anything considering they've signed these waivers is very, very low. Yeah. I mean, it's just negligence, isn't it?

[01:24:41] - [Speaker 0]
This is just it's terrible. Regardless of the fact they're rich, what other people think about that, and they're taking away news from other stories. Yeah. For sure. And I think that the rich aspect is really unfair.

[01:24:51] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. They're just people at the end of the day. Yeah. At the end of day, they have family. They went on this expedition thinking that, you know, as a once in a lifetime opportunity.

[01:25:00] - [Speaker 0]
They weren't aware of their health and safety Yeah. About this. No one wishes like that on anyone, I don't think. Exactly. And Adam, that is the story of the Ocean Gate Titan disaster.

[01:25:10] - [Speaker 0]
Wow. I didn't realize just how much foreshadowing or warnings there were. Mhmm. But yeah. Crazy.

[01:25:17] - [Speaker 0]
Crazy story. So have I firmly cemented this idea that you'll never get into a deep sea ocean sub again? I don't think I was gonna go into it anyway, to be fair. And this just reaffirms that yes. God.

[01:25:28] - [Speaker 0]
Scary as well. And also being in that confined space in the dark, knowing how claustrophobic we can be sometimes. Yeah. It's bad enough flying in economy. Have you heard they're gonna start offering standing seats now?

[01:25:41] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, they've been talking about that for a while. They're gonna do it now. Yeah. I know it's coming. But I think it's they say for like flights under two hours.

[01:25:47] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Short haul flights. Which okay. For, like, an hour, maybe it's fine. But Yeah.

[01:25:51] - [Speaker 0]
At least they got to sit down and lay down. But, god, I just feel awful for these poor people and all this negligence and the blatant hubris of Stockton Rush knowing and just being so arrogant and still proceeding forward. Yeah. All avoidable. And what was he doing it for to make himself famous?

[01:26:09] - [Speaker 0]
Well, yeah, he he's done that, but Yeah. At what cost? So should we run the outro for this week? Sure. And so that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium, an assembly of fascinating things.

[01:26:21] - [Speaker 0]
We hope you enjoy the ride as much as we did. If today's episode sparked your curiosity, then do us a favor and follow us on your favorite podcast app. It truly makes a world of difference and helps more people like you discover the show. And for our dedicated freaks out there, don't forget that next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon, and it is completely free to access. And if you want even more, then join our certified freaks tier to unlock the entire archive, delve into exclusive content, and get a sneak peek at what's coming next.

[01:26:51] - [Speaker 0]
We'd love for you to be part of our growing community. We drop new episodes every Tuesday. And until then, remember, you can dive as deep as you want, but ignore the pressure, and you'll only surface in stories like this one. We'll see you next time. See you.